virtuous sufferings (and other signs you're a child of god)
content: heavy angst, hurt/comfort, ambiguous ending
summary:
It's a quarter past twelve when Risa finds him at the stairwell. It hurts, but it doesn't surprise her he didn't get far.
or
[ connor and risa and near death experience. ]
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CyFi's house isn't a familiar place.
In the last few weeks, Connor hasn't seen a lot of familiar places, though he's stayed long enough for them to become close. The hospital bed. The therapy rooms. UNIS, though did that really count, if he can hardly remember what it was like in there - like scattered pieces of his memory had caught on the blades, and he was just left with the gruesome aftermath. He remembers the Lucrezia, just a little, but even that is fuzzy in the back of his mind.
The thing about familiar places, though, is that they let you get comfortable.
And what was comfort but the needle pressed deep in a bruised arm. The painkillers after a vivisection (or a rewinding, whatever comes first). The split-second in the air before you hit the ground hard. The last burst of energy before your hypothermia knocks you out. A cigarette after a lung cancer diagnosis. He hasn't been comfortable in a long, long time and he isn't going to let himself start now. Not after everything.
He swipes his tongue over his back molars and swallows. All of his teeth are still there. Thirty-two in all, though who's counting, anyway? His eyes are still there, too.
He'd been told that man -- Nelson -- that man had wanted them. It'd scared him, a little, thinking about it, but now he's just confused.
Connor will never understand what for.
Leaning heavy against the bathroom sink, he takes himself in in the mirror, breathes deep like he's drinking in the scent of himself. Something about his reflection makes him a little nauseous, a little uneasy; like suddenly he's looked into it and he's not quite sure who he's found there. It never felt right; he hasn't felt right after Happy Jack's and he certainly hasn't felt right for a long damn time, but after this, he doesn't think he'll ever be able to feel that way again. Not with seams across his skin carrying his years like some fucked up sort of scripture. The scar on his face, from all that time ago, twists in an ugly way when he makes a face like he might start crying, but he doesn't know what for.
Maybe for himself. Maybe for something else.
You'd think being rewound would be easier.
He knows something is a little fucked about that, but its the truth, isn't it?
You'd think it'd be easier, but its not. You're broken glass on the sidewalk. You're the crumb in the frier that won't stop getting burnt. You're the baking soda in the vinegar. You're still water. Every little movement feels a bit like you're screaming and nobody's listening. Boy crying wolf. He looks at himself in the mirror and he feels sore all over, like its sapped his remaining strength from him and all he wants to do is just collapse into pieces again.
He wonders if he will. Maybe he'll ask Cam, if they ever see each other again.
He wouldn't blame Cam if he didn't want to. Seeing Cam that day, the way he is now, made him feel a little sick, thinking of all the things he'd said.
Pork n'beans, he'd called him, he remembers. He wonders if Cam does. They're in the same can now, aren't they?
In Connor's daydream mind he peels the flesh from his jawbone (it'd be as easy as birch bark) and peers at what he looks like underneath. He wonders if there are seams all across his bones, too, like they'd had to sew all the pieces back together just like they did his skin.
He works his jaw like he's chewing on the thought. The scars on his face twist in an ugly way.
He's an ugly piece of work. Always has been but its more pronounced now.
He might puke. He probably won't.
He wonders if his stomach would all but fall into pieces.
Acid would spill all over the ground and probably burn a hole in his guts, and that'd be a sight for sore eyes if he wasn't already.
Behind him in the mirror he can see the walking cane they’d given him (just in case) and it embarrasses him, just a little.
In the back of his mind he imagines that the Connor-from-before would’ve probably laughed at the idea, and maybe that embarrassed him, too.
Look at you. People used to think you were a killer. People used to be afraid of you. What the hell are they supposed to be afraid of, now?
Maybe getting hit in the shins. Connor almost smiles at the memory of Sonia doing the same thing.
Almost, because Sonia isn’t around anymore — and Risa had never told him this but he’d been the reason why.
He makes a strange noise in the back of his throat and he stops looking in the mirror.
He hates the thing because it reminds him too much of everything and he hates the thing because he has to walk around like a cripple and he hates the thing because it reminds him he is a cripple, but he grabs the cane anyway and leans on it hard when he starts walking.
It’s hard to walk. Something about that is a little funny, but it's not, really, because it's happening to him. He feels a little like one of those dolls you have to move the legs for -- sometimes they don't move where you want them to. Sometimes they don't move. Violating your orders just because they're stupid pieces of plastic and they aren't meant to be on humans but he's got them and they don't move the way he wants them to.
He's frustrated enough to start crying but that would embarrass him more than anything.
Connor's got a lot of thoughts going through his head and he doesn't think he's got the room to hold them. Its like a never-ending spool of yarn, going and going and getting all over the place. Something about Nietzschean philosophy and lobsters and the whir of blades in his ear (like the annoying buzz of flies) and disco music from a time long past and the feeling of his face being half ripped off like he was a gift half open. Surprise!
"Merry Christmas," he says to nobody. He doesn't know what makes him say it but he doesn't know what makes him say anything, these days.
These days words just sort of pour out of him like a beer tap. He's embarrassed himself plenty enough trying to come up with the right words to say (he'd tried to ask Risa what the show was about but the only word he'd managed to say was confused, like he was a robot). He doesn't know what it is in that stitched-up fucked-up little head of his that makes him tick and say the stupidest shit anybody's ever heard but its something and it's there like a creeping parasite. Prion disease. Mad-cow.
Jesus. He's old. He feels ancient - slow and stupid and trapped in a place he shouldn't quite be in. A gator in the grocery store. A bear twisting in a circus cage. A dinosaur in a subway station. A cat in the sky and a canary watching from the grates of a kennel.
He makes another weird little noise and he makes it five steps before that not-screaming starts.
Its not him screaming and its nobody really screaming but he feels like there is all the same. His hackles raise and there's a dramatic spike in blood pressure and he feels like he just got told there's a bomb in room 4B. He's not feeling pain but some kind of panic is running up his spine. He's light-headed and feels like he's running on dope again all that time ago and about this time again he really wished he had some. His vision is blurry and he can barely see two feet in front of him and he only makes it to the steps by an act of God or something else, and he more collapses on them than he sits.
Pathetic. You're pathetic, Lassiter.
That little nagging voice in his head has got enough of a point that he can't think of a reply.
He scratches at the underside of his jaw and swallows hard.
Connor's eleven years old.
He's eleven years old and he's going to start sixth grade next year, but its not looking too great, see, because he doesn't like school all that much and he's not very good at much of anything. He's failed another math test and his mom had got on him about it, just a little, and he's sensitive, see -- not the kind of sensitive where you're crying and sobbing and sniffling but he'd thrown a glass at the wall and it'd shattered everywhere and he'd been so mortified and she'd been so angry that he'd been outside for the last two hours, just sitting on the step.
Whenever he did something bad 'cause he had one of his fits -- those kind of blackout angry fits that make his head go light and his hands go just numb enough that he won't notice if he breaks one knocking somebody's teeth in -- he likes to sit in his room or sit outside on the step. Running away from his problems like he always does (though, see, eighteen-year-old Connor can't run for much of anything).
His dad came home around six-thirty and Connor was still sitting on the step when he got there.
His dad had dropped just about everything and he'd let his phone sit forgotten on the bottom step and he just sat down next to him, watching him.
What happened this time? his dad is asking.
And Connor tells him, and like his dad always does when he does something wrong he sucks in a breath through his teeth and looks faraway into space, like he's searching for why, why God, why did you give me a kid that's such a spaz.
Connor's eleven years old and he starts crying when his dad asks him why he threw that glass, because God, he really doesn't know. He doesn't know why he does much of anything. Under anything he does there is a subtle buzz of hostility, like a snapping turtle accepting food offerings. You'll never know when they're going to snap next but you just know they will because they're the kind of dumb beast you can avoid if you're searching for the signs, giving them a wide enough berth. He snaps at pretty much anything and by the time he's fifteen years old he's angry at the world and the eleven-year-old Connor inside of him is still crying over why he broke that glass, because he was angry and he didn't know why.
Ain't that something, eighteen-year-old Connor thinks, and he shifts in his spot and lets his cane fall against his knee.
He sighs. Bounces his leg.
He wishes his dad were here.
He felt a coldness pass through him and said nothing about that, even though that annoying little bug inside him (the one that makes him say things that don't quite make sense, that don't quite slap together, just because he wants to) is starting up again.
Because, really, he doesn't want his dad here. If it weren't for his dad and his mom he wouldn't be here in the first place. He wouldn't be a cripple that walked with a cane and talked like a thesaurus and had more blood on his hands than he had brains.
If it weren't for him, they wouldn't have signed that order in the first place -- but fifteen-year-old Connor has always been good at ducking responsibility and eighteen-year-old Connor is no better.
"Connor?"
He looks up, surprised, then has to turn around. Keeps on bouncing his leg.
Risa was standing behind him, halfway down the steps. She looks tired, but she's always looked tired. She's so pretty it makes his heart ache and then it makes him a little homesick, because she's always been that way and he's done nothing but change.
Carefully, he shifts to the side to make room for her to walk past (he wishes she would), but of course, she doesn't. She takes that as an invitation to sit.
He angles his gaze carefully, feigning intense interest in the chandelier opposite from the kitchen doorway, to avoid the embarrassment of looking her in the eye.
"You feeling okay?" she asks.
Almost instinctively, Connor tucks away his arm - the one that isn't his - and wraps it around his middle like he's nursing an old gut wound, carefully hiding the ink on the other side. He avoids eye contact because he knows she hates when he does that. "Yeah - yeah. Just. Thinking."
"About?"
"Nothing." He brushes his shoulder against hers. The contact makes him shiver. "Go back to sleep."
She takes that in for a moment. "Will you come with me if I do?"
"Probably not."
"Then you have my answer."
There's a trembling around Connor's thighs that has him digging his free fingers into his left, trying to staunch the shaking. He doesn't want her here and at the same time he doesn't want her to go anywhere. Dimly he's reminded of one of their nights in the transport truck, all those days ago.
It'd been cold and he'd been so nervous he'd been trembling just like this, not because of the cold, per say, but because he'd put his arm around her and said something corny like -- Body heat, right? And for some godforsaken reason she'd let him.
Her eyes were soft, and hazel, and quick, and they did not miss much. Experimentally, her hand reaches out and gently rests over his, like she was testing the waters.
They don't talk much.
Sure, they talked, but a lot of the time it wasn't about things that mattered, and a lot of the time it was cruel things; some they meant and most they did not.
Why don't we ever talk about things like this? He'd asked her once when he'd run his hand over the scar on her wrist. They were in Sonia's basement, still, holding each other quietly when the others were far too busy to pay attention. She was watching him carefully, his thumb tracing over the scar experimentally, and when she pulled her hand away he didn't protest, instead let his hand fall back to his side.
She hadn't answered his question; in fact, she hadn't said anything at all.
He knew the answer, though, or felt he knew it.
It was him at the end of everything. He knows he's not easy to get along with. Maybe responsibility is a learned thing, and he'd only learned it just when he'd thought he was dying. Just when he was dying. He's not responsible or maybe he's not kind enough; whatever it is, she doesn't like talking about these things with him. He thinks he understands that. He doesn't tell her much, either.
Maybe its because she does the same thing. Maybe its because they're both sitting in their own well of irresponsibility.
Whatever it is, they don't talk much.
"Are you okay?" she asks again. "Really?"
Connor swallows.
He taps his foot against the floor and he makes a strange noise in the back of his throat. "Uh ..." he says, but suddenly, the words won't come out right. He's trembling right to his knees and his hand is shaking when he lifts it and grasps at the air wordlessly, as if trying to grasp onto the speech that had flickered within him and died. Ralph and the signal fire. Gregor and metamorphosis. Mr. White and the monkey's paw. Always searching for the right thing to say, grasping desperately at the edge of memory - perhaps a call for arms or perhaps a warning of some kind or perhaps a warning not to wish on a monkey's paw - and yet all that comes out is awkward and stunted; a half-birth of what it could've been. Those aren't the things he wants to say, either. "I don't ... know how to answer that right now."
Risa takes his hand once more and squeezes it gently. "Do they still hurt?"
"Sure."
" ... that's not it, though, is it?"
"No."
That's not entirely it, he thinks, because it could be, but its not. You hurt enough you kind of start to get used to it after a while. You teach a dog through repetition and if you kick a dog enough it'll come crawling back regardless, just because it has to, just because that's the only thing it knows. But its a combination of things. Its a little like being divided except its bits and pieces of your skull lying in fragments on the ground, reminding you of things you would much prefer to forget.
"You can talk to me about it." Risa nudges him gently with her shoulder. "I'll listen."
You won't understand, is what Connor wants to say, but he doesn't. He swallows it back like bile and says instead: "Okay."
He also wants to say, we can skip this part. We can fast forward. We can keep on. Its a bit like a game with them but there's no point in playing if it wins you no points at all.
We can fast forward, he really wants to say, because if he's impossible to get along with Risa is impossible to talk to.
She'll listen, and that's that. You can't expect good advice from her and you can't expect empathy, because, really, she's not the one who agrees with you; she tells you like it is and she tells you how she sees it, and right now he doesn't need to hear that. Not from her. Because its her, and because she drives him a little nuts, and because he loves her so much he is nuts and he doesn't really know how to explain that he feels like he's dying but its slow and different and nobody else can tell except him. He feels like he came back in all the wrong ways and he cannot figure out how to explain that to anybody but the wretched face in the mirror.
They aren't really alike, he and Risa.
Polar opposites, but not quite. There's something Risa's got that he's missing integrally and there's something he's got that she's missing, too, and really, how do you explain that to anybody?
Maybe Risa's just empty and he's overflowing and whatever he's got will rub off onto her. Big attitudes they've both got that are overcompensating for something. Connor's always had difficulty knowing what he's feeling because its always boiled down to anger in the end (what else can you expect from him, really) and she's got the hungry street-kid look in her eyes that tells him she's always been searching for something she's yet to find. Maybe all those thoughts mean nothing. Maybe all of that boils down to some kind of scripture and it really doesn't mean anything.
Whatever it means, they're going through it together. The most he has is that.
He can tell she's waiting on an appropriately decent answer, but he doesn't have one. He scratches at the underside of his jaw and he sighs.
She makes a face. The kind of face she makes when she’s trying not to get upset. She furrows her brows and looks away and it painfully reminds him of that moment-before, that moment before UNIS he can’t quite remember but he can remember the look on her face. He's seen that look plenty of times, both as aggressor and victim and it rips through his chest like barbed wire.
This could go very well, or very badly - there's no inbetween, not quite. He doesn't like to think of things as black and white or up and down or yes and no, but this is how that's going to go. She'll think its stupid or she won't. She'll get it or she'll just say she does but she really can't. He expects too much from her and he expects too little from her. She expects enough from him and half the time he gives her too little.
Only two ways this can end. However it does is how it'll be.
"I don't ... know, how to explain this to you," he says finally.
Disappointment lingers there at the edge of her gaze, but she doesn't show it. Doesn't voice it. "I can't imagine what that must feel like," she says (no, you can't, he thinks half-snide), and she leans closer to look him in the eye. "But - you can talk, and I'll listen, and we can figure it out together."
Alright. Alright.
Connor taps his cane against the ground and it makes a gentle little thwack. Alright, he thinks. This is going to be his worst moment.
This is going to be when he sounds like a total moron.
But she's watching him, and she's ready to listen, and he takes in a breath of air and says, "Okay. Let's figure it out."
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